Mapping the Landscape
by Tinka
Summary: Unexplored territory leads to unsuspected roads.


TITLE: Mapping the Landscape  
AUTHOR: Tinka  
EMAIL: mullane@NOSPAMscandis-kol.dk (remove NOSPAM if replying)  
CLASSIFICATION: MSR UST?, V  
RATING: G  
SPOILERS: Tiny one for 'Never Again'  
DISCLAIMER: Not mine, nope siree.  
SUMMARY: Unexplored territory leads to unsuspected roads.  
NOTES: At the end of the story.  
FEEDBACK: Yes, please!!! I'd be a fool to decline.  
  
-------------------  
in the map of the world  
go the twists of fate  
- d. dobbyn  
-------------------  
  
The landscape in my dreams is like the body of a woman. I trace  
the roads like I trace a woman's spine. Gently, I move down with a  
feather light finger before I come to unexplored territory. This  
is where my dreams break off, for this is no ordinary landscape  
nor is it an ordinary woman.   
  
In my dreams, she is a red-head. This corresponds with the forests  
of golden leaves that my fingers run through. Sometimes, my hands  
become entangled and I am lost. I am not frightened, because I am  
lost in her. The dreamy landscape is friendly, yet dangerous. Its  
seas have uncharted depths. I could drown or I could set sail.   
Yet, when I'm with her, I do not care where I am falling.  
  
My favourite site is a tiny grove, almost undetectable to the eye.  
I know where it is. I have named it. It is right at the spot where  
the neck meets the chest. Where the mountain becomes a field. I  
linger in this tiny grove that I fool-heartedly have claimed as my  
own, though I know others have been here before. I dream.  
  
I want to claim everything as mine. I want to conquer and rule.   
The landscape resists and leads me down unsuspected paths, and I  
must acknowledge my defeat. She only has to look at me with her  
bright blue eyes and I become the invaded territory. I am  
colonized.  
  
The landscape and the woman cannot be separated. They are one, and  
yet they are different. The landscape is a dream landscape, while  
she belongs to the realm of reality. I only know of the landscape  
through the time of in-between when I'm neither asleep nor awake.  
The woman belongs to my days.   
  
I am sitting beside her wondering how to tell her of my dreams. I   
want to reach out and trace the roads of her body. I want to dive  
down into the pools of her soul. I wish I was less poetic. I feel  
foolish and inadequate. She would laugh at me if I told her.  
  
---------------------  
  
It is a bright spring afternoon. One of those afternoons that  
inscribes itself on your memory, as if your mind was made of  
parchment and time a pen dripping with black ink. We are sitting  
in comfortable silence outside a coffee shop in Buffalo, NY. It is  
really too cold to be lounging outside, but she persuaded me. I  
sit clutching my black coffee trying to stay warm. The wind is  
blowing, the sun is shining and she is smiling. Her hair is all   
messed up by the wind, her cheeks are flushed and as she turns  
to look at me, her eyes are ever so bright blue. I am in love  
with this woman.   
  
She is sipping her latte as if she has no other care in the world.  
In reality, we have to be at a crime scene in 30 minutes' time.  
We have been called to Buffalo on short notice. Last night an  
elderly woman discovered three bodies in her living room. They had  
all committed suicide in what the police deemed a ritualistic  
manner. One of the bodies had been identified as the woman's only  
son. I suspect that the FBI's most notorious unit has been called  
out here because of the so-called ritualistic aspect of the whole she-bang. We will soon know.  
  
Soon Scully will be putting on her pale white rubber gloves and  
start cutting up dead people. I will be looking at photos of   
blood, death and decay. Right now, we are ordinary people sitting  
in the sunlight of a cold, yet glorious, spring afternoon. She is  
looking at the people passing us. I know she is playing her little  
game of trying to guess what they do for a living. I wonder what  
they think when they look at us in passing. Do we look like we  
deal in death, destruction and conspiracies? I am supposed to be  
the profiler, the psychologist - yet, I cannot look at us in an  
objective way anymore. All I can see when I look at Scully is her  
infinite warmth, and her stubborn strength. And when I look at  
myself all I see is a man in love with her. I am two fools I  
know.. for loving her and for not saying so to her.  
  
A strange smile is playing on her lips as she finishes her latte.  
We both rise and walk towards the police station. I am smoothing  
her hair, she is trying to straighten my tie. I am too tall for  
her and I gently bend my knees.   
  
- You should have changed clothes, Mulder. Your suit is creased.  
  
Her voice is soft and lightly teasing. We both know I've worn more  
creased suits, had worse haircuts and sported more tasteless ties  
than I do today. I suspect she just wants me to know that she has  
noticed the way I look. Because she loves me, just as I love her.  
I shrug with a goofy grin on my lips.   
  
- It will get more creased in the course of the day, Scully. Why  
bother?   
  
She shakes her head with what she thinks is a stern look on her  
face. In reality, it is just a soft, tender glow from her eyes  
coupled with a tiny frown. A ripple in the sea. A fold in the  
landscape of her body. I pull myself together, straighten up and  
place my hand on her back. I'm marking my territory. And as we   
walk into the police station together, we are one body for a brief  
second. We cannot be separated. I am her, she is me. We are a   
unit.   
  
---------------  
  
In old days it was easy to be a cartographer. All you had to do  
was board a ship, carry some paper or parchment and arm yourself  
with pens and bottles of ink. Simply by sailing in a new  
direction, you would enlarge the world. Every morning when you  
opened your eyes, you would lay eyes on new shores, new  
coastlines, new seas. You would take your pen and draw the land on  
your piece of animal skin. You would name the mountains, the  
rivers and the forests.  
  
Today everything has been named, labelled and categorized.  
Everything has been defined in terms of longitude and latitude.  
All travel is circumnavigation. Everything has been found.  
There is no use for cartographers anymore. But her body is  
still a foreign country that I desperately want to visit.  
I want to inscribe my name on her skin. Use my tongue as pen  
and write my name. "This is Mulder's Land". "This belongs to  
Mulder". I do not like myself when I think this way. It  
becomes too much of a power game. She becomes an object for  
my desire. An object I can possess and lock up in the treasury.  
But I want her to conquer me too. I want her to draw on my  
skin, to find mountains and seas on my body.   
  
It is midnight. We are going back to Washington tomorrow morning.   
There was no case for us here. It was a waste of time. The sky is  
overcast and the moon is nearly impossible to discover. I am  
standing at the open window and I am shivering. I rub my arm and  
discover goosebumps. Tiny stones on the smooth surface of a field.  
Rocks on a beach. I hear her footsteps behind me, but I do not  
turn.   
  
- What the hell are you doing, Mulder?  
  
Her voice is amused. She traces my arm with her finger. My muscles  
tense briefly.   
  
- You are cold. You have goosebumps on your skin.  
  
Her voice is no longer amused. It is quiet, pensive. A finger  
turns into a hand rubbing my arm. I close the window.  
  
- What do you see when you look at me, Scully?  
  
I turn my head and look at the tiny woman standing next to me. She  
is wearing a big tee-shirt and pyjama trousers. She looks  
vulnerable. I want to protect her. She is silent. I worry she has  
taken my question to be vain or silly. Yet, instead of  
wise-cracking, she takes me seriously. She looks at me -   
carefully, deliberately and painstakingly. She remains silent for  
a long time, and I look out of the window again. When she finally  
speaks, her voice sounds strangely loud.  
  
- I see my friend. I see my partner. I see understanding. I see  
trust. I see tenderness. Despair. Joy. Intelligence. Loneliness.  
The heart of a warrior. The soul of a healer. A fool. A knight. A  
poet. I see a boy. I see a man. I see a son. I see a father. I  
see the man I'd marry if circumstances were any different.   
  
Her voice becomes a whisper when she utters the final words. I  
remain looking out of the window. I am looking at my own  
reflection. Her hand has not moved from my arm. Her touch scalds  
me.  
  
- Do you know what I see, Scully? Do you know what I see when I  
look at myself?  
  
- No..  
  
Her voice is so quiet. So quiet that its implied feelings threaten  
to break me.   
  
- I see a fool. A jester. A clown. A clumsy boy with a big nose  
who tries to get the attention of the girl he loves. A geek with  
braces who can quote a thousand poets and yet he cannot express  
his emotions. A man who has destroyed people. A hothead who  
constantly gets into problems. A boy who cries himself to  
exhausted sleep.   
  
Her hand moves towards my chest. I turn my head. Our eyes meet. I  
can see myself in her eyes. I swim in her ocean. I could swim for  
hours without tiring. She does not move. Her fingers just keep  
circling on my chest. She is mapping me. I lean the slightest bit  
towards her. Tonight I'm a cartographer too.   
  
----------------------------  
  
We board the airplane. My hand is on the small of her back.  
Resting on the circle of snakes that I saw for the first time last  
night. It used to be another man's flag. A sign that he claimed  
this place before me. It used to bother me. I am not bothered  
anymore. I have replaced his flag with my own signs of ownership:  
the small purple bruise on her thigh; the tiny indenture on her  
left hip that matches my set of teeth so perfectly; the traces of my  
tongue. Last night I wrote my name all over her. I got lost in the  
golden forests of her hair. I found hidden, secret places. She is  
mine. And I am hers. Underneath my creased suit, my imperfectly  
starched shirt and ugly tie, I am marked by her. I am charted. Her  
handwriting is all over me. I have been named by her. I am her  
map, her book.   
  
She told me last night that she did not pretend to know what I  
wanted from her. She offered me love. It was all she could give  
me. I took her hand, dipped her finger in the ink of her body  
and asked her to write on me. It was all I wanted, all I could  
ask. Her tears rained on my mountains and forests. Her tears  
erased the old, old maps from my body and she began  
re-inscribing, re-tracing landmarks.  
  
We have window seats, but I care not for the landscape outside  
the aircraft. I care not that we are heading for our apartments in  
Washington. We have found our real landscapes, our real homes. We  
are cartographers seeking no more.  
  
---------------  
  
AUTHOR'S NOTES:  
"Mapping the Landscape" was inspired by a variety of sources that  
I need acknowledge. The novels "The English Patient" by Michael  
Ondaatje and "A Discovery of Strangers" by Rudy Wiebe - both   
novels feature cartographers as main characters and cartography as  
a main symbol. The wonderful poetry of New Zealand poet Allen  
Curnow (I used a line from a poem of his) and the Caribbean Derek  
Walcott - both poets are preoccupied with geography and   
landscapes. The music and lyrics of Neil Finn. I have used a few  
lines from his inspirational and sensual songs. He too is using  
the landscape as a metaphor for the love between a man and a   
woman. Finally, I need to thank the people who wrote and  
encouraged me to keep posting my stories. Feedback *is* important.  
And thank you, Niwhai, for being my trustworthy beta.   
~ mullane@NOSPAMscandis-kol.dk ~  



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